Jim Connolly Marketing

How many is “enough”?

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Marketing focus

I have a very quick, yet powerful marketing tip for you today. It seems simplistic, yet it’s something that the majority of small business owners fail to do. And it’s essential for their success.

Decide what you want from your business, in all the key areas, not just financial areas. Then, turn that want into a target, by putting a number on it.

You can’t hit a target that doesn’t exist

Almost every business owner has a numeric target for profits, revenues etc. However, they tend not to have specific number based targets for the areas of their business, which are essential for achieving those financial targets.

For example, there are things you’ll need to do in order to attract 4,000 new customers over the next 12 months, which are irrelevant if you need to attract 40. The number is what gives you your target. And your target will then rule in and rule out, certain strategies. It will also let you accurately measure whether you’re on track or not.

I speak with business owners regularly, who are wasting time and money on advertising, social media, promotions, sponsoring events… which have absolutely nothing to do with the actual goals or needs of their business.

I see this most often with accountants, freelancers, trainers, lawyers, consultants, designers, coaches, etc. They almost always go wide and shallow, rather than narrow and deep.

They try and reach as many people as possible (wide), with social media, advertising, promotions and such (shallow). They’re being vaguely relevant to a wide number of people, rather than directly relevant to a smaller number of targeted prospective clients. And vaguely relevant marketing is 100% ineffective. It totally fails to capture attention and is too weak to motivate anyone to do anything.

Here are just a few areas where you need number-based targets, in order to make the right marketing and business development decisions.

  • How will you know when you are attracting enough high quality sales leads? Put a number on it.
  • How will you know when you are getting enough word of mouth referrals? Put a number on it.
  • How will you know when your business is retaining enough existing clients? Put a number on it.
  • How will you know when your profitability is high enough? Put a number on it.
  • How will you know when you have enough subscribers? Put a number on it.
  • How will you know when you have enough visitors to your website? Put a number on it.
  • How will you know when your professional network is large enough? Put a number on it.

Let those numbers, which are specific to what you want from your business, guide you. It will give you clarity like never before. You’ll be able to make better decisions and focus on the right activities, to achieve your main goals.

Let your competitors grow YOUR business!

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marketing, usp, different, ego

There’s an old saying that tells us, let your past make you better, not bitter.

I learned the hard way that we, as business owners, need to use a revised version of that saying: let your competitors make you better, not bitter. 

When I started my business it grew very big, very quick and for a few years, I earned a ton of money. 

Until…

I started to get fewer enquiries from new prospects. Then, even fewer new enquiries. Around that same time, I started hearing about a marketing agency that had moved into my area, focusing, like me, on small business owners. I started to resent the new agency. I assumed they were telling prospects anything, just to get the work in and that they’d soon be found out.

So, I ignored them.

Until it became impossible to ignore them.

It turns out they were good. Very good.

The agency was a partnership of 2 super smart professionals. They were also hard working and agile. There was clearly no point allowing my ego to resent their success and blame them for my situation.

So, I stopped being bitter. Then, focused everything on getting better.

Here’s the key lesson I hope you find useful, from my mistake.

If you have a competitor or a number of competitors ahead of you, there’s always a reason. The challenge is that it’s hard to admit to ourselves that a competitor is stronger than us in 1 or more areas. 

When we look at our high-performing competitors with non-ego clarity, here’s what we’ll typically find.

  • They market their services better than we do.
  • They offer an outstanding service.
  • They offer a valuable variation of a service that’s only available from them.
  • They’ve found a cost-effective way to deliver their service, and pass some of that onto their customers or clients. 
  • And some do all of the above, plus more.

As I discovered, it can be painful to admit that we need to up our game. That we need to improve. That the competition, who some see as their enemy, is doing something better then we are. That we are the cause, and the cure, of our situation. 

But when we do… and truly believe it’s down to us… we’re 90% of the way to what can be our greatest success ever.

Why?

Because we’ll accept we need to make improvements. And when we focus on making improvements, our actions follow. We’ll do the work or get the help we need.

And THAT’S what’s needed for us to finally enjoy the results we’ve always wanted.

Follow-up: Increase conversion rates up to 80%

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Marketing, follow-up, following up customer

Photo: David McElwee

I’d like to share a way for you to quickly improve your sales conversion rates by up to 80%. All with a simple adjustment to your follow-up process.

When I say the adjustment is simple, it really is. However, right now, you may find it tricky. So, I’m going to show you what the adjustment is, then how to make it a simple process.

It starts with some data.

According to data from Sopro, “Sending three follow-up emails can increase your success rate by over 80%“.

There are lots of similar studies and all of them show very impressive results. The number of follow-ups changes and the success percentage changes, depending on your industry, etc. One thing is crystal clear though: if we follow-up enough times, our results will improve and the improvement will be considerable.

What stops most businesses from following-up often enough?

In my conversations with small business owners, it’s mostly down to 2 things.

  • Not wanting to be seen as a nuisance.
  • Not having a follow-up structure in place. When it’s random, confidence drops. I’ll show you a simple follow-up structure in a moment.

We’re not being a nuisance when we follow-up

When we follow-up on a prospect’s interest, we’re helping them avoid missing out. Our services or products are important enough for them to have responded to us or to have contacted us for information.

However, after a few days, our prospect has probably forgotten our email. They’ve had urgent requests from their customers, urgent meetings to attend… just like you and me. Yes, it’s important to them. But people’s attention is focused on the urgent, far more than the important.

How do we get the follow-up right?

Develop a follow-up structure

Here’s a simple framework that you can adjust to suit you and your business.

In general, I recommend you follow-up at least 3 times, 5 working days apart.

Use different send times.

  • Send 1 in the morning.
  • 1 at lunchtime.
  • 1 later in the afternoon.

Why?

Different people have different times of the day when they’re busiest. By following-up at 3 different times, we ensure hitting their optimal time at least once.

A few notes

You can follow-up using different platforms. Email, phone or social media can all work great. It can be very effective to use at least 2 different forms of contact.

When following-up, it’s important not to say sorry for interrupting them! You’re not an interruption. You’re a professional who wants to help and do what’s best for the prospect. Only amateurs let things fizzle out.

No prospect is the same every time you contact them. They have times when their cash flow is a problem. They also have times when their cash situation is excellent. They have times when they feel anxious. They have times when they feel confident. You get the idea. Only by putting a follow-up strategy in place do you stand the best chance of catching their attention at the right time.

Before you decide not to give this a try, consider this. How many new clients or additional sales have you been 1 follow-up away from over the years?

A personal note: I discovered this the hard way. I used to only follow-up once or twice. I then discovered the difference it can make to follow-up at least 3 times. I’d been in business 2-years back then and it lost me a fortune.

Tiny tweaks. Huge wins

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How to get great business ideas, how to, get business ideas,

One of the quickest ways to improve your results, is to spot and fix the tiny things that can make a big difference to your business.

Here are some ideas to quickly get you started.

Sham spam

In 2024, I almost lost two, high-quality enquiries from people who became new clients. It was down to what I call sham spam.

Here’s what it is and how to avoid it.

Yes, I know you check your spam email folder. I’m specifically referring to the anti-spam folder on your website, designed to filter spammy messages from reaching you. Genuine business contact form enquiries are sometimes wrongly filtered as spam and you never see them. I learned this one the hard way! It doesn’t happen often, but often enough to justify checking occasionally.

Why not check your spam folder after you’ve finished reading this? It takes very little time.

Customer connections

Regularly make time to connect with at least one of your clients. This incudes former clients. Not to sell them something. Simply to ask how they’re doing and catch up with them. Business relationships become stronger, when they’re based on more than just selling.

Ongoing communication with your clients also helps you to better understand their challenges, their needs and their wants. This understanding makes it easier and less risky, for you to successfully create new services or products.

Pathway planning

If you don’t know where you’re going, every path will take you there. That’s unproductive. It scatters your focus. It leads to dead ends. It’s also why I recommend you plan your days, your weeks and your months in advance.

After all, how can you know if things are going according to plan, if you don’t have a plan?

Flakey forms

This idea takes no time and might stop you from losing important sales enquiries. Go to your website and make sure your contact forms and subscriber forms are working. Often, a form will look perfect when it’s not functioning correctly. So, test your forms by filling-in the required information and make sure everything is okay. It only takes a few minutes, but it could help you avoid missing-out on valuable leads or new subscribers. This is especially the case, whenever you update the software on your website or have any work done on it. 

I hope you found these ideas useful. If you did, remember to share them with your friends.

10 Reasons your business isn’t growing. And how to fix it

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why business isnt growing, fix it

Photo: Shutterstock.

If you’re wondering, “Why isn’t my business growing?” this information packed article is written just for you. I’m going to share 10 extremely common reasons why your business is not growing that limit or stop the growth of a business, PLUS how to quickly turn things around.

Let’s get started.

Your business isn’t growing, because you stopped growing

Your business is a reflection of the decisions you make. Your decisions are based on what you know and how you feel about what you know. So, for your business to grow, you need to grow. After all, you can’t give your business the benefit of knowledge, which you don’t have.

How to fix it

Read the books. Study those who’ve achieved what you want to achieve. Seek expert advice. Grow. Then watch your business grow too.

Your business is not growing because you’re selling based on price

Your prospective clients can go to Google and find a lower priced alternative in seconds. If they can’t, your pricing is almost certainly way too low. It takes a huge amount of planning and a watertight strategy, to sell based on being lowest priced and still make a worthwhile profit. Some big brands manage to succeed on wafer thin margins, but it’s a very precarious approach. In the very unpredictable economy of 2026, this is just too risky.

Usually, small businesses only market based on being low priced, because it’s easy to lower prices or fees. It takes very little effort. It takes even less creativity. You simply undercut your competitors. We call this the race to the bottom. It’s a race you don’t want to win, as you end up working for peanuts and attracting the lowest value clients.

Note: Clients you attract through low fees are the easiest to lose. Price-focused buyers will jump ship as soon as they learn of a lower priced alternative to you.

How to fix it

Instead of selling based on being the lowest priced, look for opportunities to pump more value to what you do. Not only will this make your business more profitable, it will allow you to compete for better clients… those who value you and what you do.

Your business isn’t growing because you’ve camouflaged yourself

This is one of the most common mistakes made by small business owners. Very, very few small businesses stand out. Perhaps 1 in every 10,000. Instead, they opt for the fake safety of being just like their competitors.

This is why we find that when we look at the providers in any industry, they seem so similar. You could swap them around and no one would notice.

They offer a similar range of services. They make similar promises. They charge similar fees. In effect, they become invisible. Almost impossible to tell apart.
They have camouflaged themselves within the masses.

How to fix it

If you want to stand out, do something outstanding. Something remarkable. Something uniquely valuable. Find a new service, which your competitors don’t provide. Develop a new pricing model.

Just don’t be like all the others, if you want to get noticed.

You’re associating with the wrong people

There’s a direct link between how we think, and the people we habitually associate with.

  • If we associate with people who inspire us, we feel inspired.
  • If we associate with people who encourage us and motivate us to stretch, we grow.

That’s why it pays to be selective regarding the people we associate with. For example, when we associate with people who are doing better than we are, the natural inclination is for us to rise to their level.

Of course, the opposite is also true. When we associate with people who are pessimists, people who complain, people whose businesses are going nowhere, people who blame the economy, people who gossip… we can soon find ourselves with everything they have!

As Jim Rohn used to tell us: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with”. That average may have changed over the years since my mentor’s passing, but the concept remains true.

How to fix it

Choose wisely. Associate with people who will inspire you to be better. People who will encourage you and motivate you to be the best you can be.

You’re connecting with the wrong people

In business, it’s extremely important to build great connections with influential people. This is the exact opposite of what the typical small business owner does. They go for numbers instead, and look in the worst possible places.

Think about it: We’ve all met business owners who struggle to find new clients, even though they’re members of a networking group and have hundreds, maybe thousands of Linkedin contacts.

That should be impossible.

Right?

Surely, with so many contacts, these struggling business owners would be able to reach out with a message and quickly attract more client enquiries than they need. However, this never happens. Why? Because they are connected to business owners who lack the influence and contacts, to be able to make a difference!

How to fix it

The most successful business owners use the exact opposite approach. I recommend you do the same. It looks like this: They deliberately target the most influential people in their marketplace and put a strategy together, to connect with them. They do this months before they ask anything from them.

And no, you will not find the most influential people in networking clubs, asking struggling business owners for introductions. You’ll have to do a little research. But that’s fine. You’re aiming for quality, not numbers.

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You’re starving your business of the marketing it needs

No matter how great your business is, unless you market it effectively, no one will know. Sadly, it’s a fact that an average business that’s marketed correctly, will always outperform a wonderful business that has ineffective marketing. This is why some lousy businesses make a fortune, whilst some great businesses struggle.

By starving your business of professional marketing, by default, you’re relying on amateur marketing. This makes no sense, as it is both more expensive, and vastly less effective, than getting expert help.

How to fix it

If you want great marketing results get the expert help you need.

Your business isn’t growing, because you’ve become comfortable

Small business owners usually start off with great plans, but somewhere along the way they settle. Instead of focusing on building their business, so it provides them with the rewards they want, they switch.

They switch to lowering their lifestyle expectations, so it meets the limitations of their under performing business.

How to fix it

It’s up to you to switch things back the way they should be! This means leaving your comfort zone, setting exciting goals and then making the commitment to take the action required.

You’re getting too few referrals, so your business isn’t growing

Business owners who get too few referrals have to quickly figure out why their clients and associates are not referring them. This is a tough challenge to face. It means accepting there’s a serious problem and then being willing to fix things.

Yes, it’s serious, extremely serious, if you get too few referrals.

Not only are you missing out on a regular supply of valuable leads, your clients and associates, for whatever reason, do not want to recommend you. And there’s always a reason.

How to fix it

A customer survey may help you find out why. However, honest conversations with those whose opinions you trust are often extremely useful too.

Just as importantly, when you get the feedback you need, make sure you do something with it. It’s hard sometimes to accept you have areas of your business, which you need to improve. I’ve seen business owners ignore really valuable feedback, believing they’re already offering an amazing service.

Don’t make that mistake. Listen to what the feedback is telling you. Then take appropriate action.

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You’re not failing often enough

Many small business owners let their fear of failure stop them from putting their ideas into action. The challenge with that mindset, is that without trying fresh ideas, you stagnate by default.

When a business is new it’s easy to risk everything. After all, unless you start out with a ton of money behind you, (like Sir Richard Branson and Seth Godin), you have nothing to lose.

However, once your business is established the penalty for failing seems bigger.

Here’s why:

  • Business owners tend to over estimate the price of failure. They imagine all kinds of unrealistic worst case scenarios.
  • To make things worse, they also tend to under estimate the potential rewards. They seem unaware that just one good idea can improve their business beyond recognition.

The fear of failure is the biggest hurdle to your success. It robs you of opportunity. It causes you to play it safe, which is the riskiest thing a business owner can do.

How to fix it

Interestingly, the most successful business owners see failure very differently.

It looks like this:

  • If they try something and it doesn’t work, they learn from it. They then invest the lesson in their next idea. This makes them far more likely to succeed the next time. So, they win.
  • If they try something and it works, they learn from it and earn from it. So, they win.

That mindset regarding failure is what I recommend you work on. It was an area of my own development that needed a lot of improvement. But when you learn the commercial value of failure, everything starts to fall into place. It’s like removing a blockage that’s been a barrier to your success. You will never look back.

Now what?

If your business isn’t growing the way you want it to, it’s likely that several or more of those 10 reasons require your attention. Put them right and you’ll enjoy the rewards. So, take some time today to focus on just one of those points. The sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll achieve the results you know you deserve.

Here’s how the best paid service providers earn the highest fees

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marketing, service providers

If you’re a service provider, your income is based on just 2 things.

1. The value you bring. This is what determines how much your clients pay you. Between the best paid and the lowest paid, there can be a factor of hundreds and hundreds of percent. Here’s an example I have used many times. My friend hired a photographer for a product shoot in London. The person he hired charged £17,000 for the shoot. The lowest quote for the same shoot, on the same date, with the same remit, was just over £900.

2. How well you market the value you bring. This is what attracts the attention of your prospective clients. It’s what communicates your value in a way that motivates people to hire you.

Each of those areas can be improved. And by focusing on both areas, they leverage one another. When this happens, it radically improves everything for you.

Compounded for spectacular results

That’s right. You get the financial reward of charging 5x, 10x or whatever. Plus, you’re also attracting more clients. These combine and compound. The results are transformational.

The best part (other than the massive financial rewards)? All of this is possible, by focusing your attention and activity on just 2 things.

Business owners who work on those areas correctly, don’t just improve their results. They dramatically improve everything about their business and their financial future. This isn’t marginal gains I’m talking about. It’s life-changing. You know what always amazes me? Most service providers reading this will find it compelling, or at least very interesting. And they will do nothing.

Consider this for a moment.

Think about how amazing things would be for you at the end of 2025, if you decided now to do something, so you can correctly apply those 2 ideas.

You can do it.

How do I know?

Because I’ve literally lost count of how many people I have seen go from charging average and below average fees, to charging vastly more and enjoying all the benefits that brings.